Ziyaad Ahmed

"Ziyaad Ahmed is currently the COO and Co-Founder of Spotii, a leading Buy Now Pay Later in the GCC region. Spotii is focused on empowering consumers to help budget monthly payments in a transparent and no cost manner. Spotii allows customers to split a payment at POS in equal instalments at absolutely zero cost to the consumer. Ziyaad leads the team’s in-house Data, Risk and Analytics. He designed Spotii’s tech infrastructure around the use of Big Data. Spotii’s proprietary Machine Learning Algorithms uses alternative data sources to not provide immediate and personalized credit decisioning for consumers at POS, a metric known as the “Spotii Score”, but also allows its recommender systems to match consumers with brands based on their real time needs or preferences. Spotii’s differentiator has been using data and analytics to maximize merchant revenue, while ensuring responsible customer debt burdens. Ziyaad was previously an early employee at Afterpay US in San Francisco, a leading Global BNPL, which was bought out by Block Inc for $29Bn in January 2022. Prior to his time in tech, he was a quant hedge fund investor at Citadel, using Big Data to invest in US consumer, technology, and retail stocks. Ziyaad received his undergraduate degree in Arts and Finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, his MBA in Behavioral Psychology, Statistics and Finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and his Graduate Degree in Advanced Data Science from the University of Berkeley. "